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BioWare: Mass Effect 3 Shaped by 1,000 Story Variables

Your choices in ME and ME2 will have a big impact on how ME3 plays out.

Your Mass Effect 3 will likely be very different than mine. If you've played the first two installments of BioWare's sci-fi epic, the developer reports that you've been given more than 1,000 opportunities to uniquely shape Commander Shepard's experience in the franchise's third installment.

In an interview with CVG, Mass Effect 2 project lead Casey Hudson revealed BioWare has its hands full tailoring the story to accommodate gamers that plan to transfer their Commander Shepards from the first two games to the third.

"We plan out the larger plot points of the story from one game to the next, but it would be impossible to plan it all in advance," Hudson said. "More importantly, we'd never be able to plan as many creative opportunities if we'd do it all up front."

"Instead, we record what a player has done in a play-through, and then we have all of those choices available that writers can refer to as they build storylines," he continued. "Numerically, it's over 1,000 variables that we'll have access to for shaping the Mass Effect 3 experience for people who've played the previous games."

Hudson also stated that Mass Effect 3 will be much more of a continuation of the second game and wouldn't feature as many gameplay changing features players saw from the original to Mass Effect 2.

Sharkey says: I love what BioWare is doing with this franchise and the option to save and transfer your character. I knew there were a number of different choices gamers could make in the first two games, but I had no idea there were over 1,000 variables that could impact the story in ME3. Awesome.